Sixty-Nine, Nice
by ac0llecti0n0fn0nsense
Summary: In which James Potter and Lily Evans are in a math course together and have absolutely no chill. University AU.


A/N: This is dedicated to the Castle Crew, who made what was supposed to be a joke prompt into a real thing. You guys are the best thing since pockets on dresses!

* * *

James honestly could not tell you what he had been thinking when he registered for an eight am class on Fridays. And a math course at that. _Math._ No one should have to try to do advanced calculus at eight am on a Friday.

He wondered if perhaps he had been drunk when he'd done it, or it was Sirius playing a practical joke on him. Either way, he walked into his first class of the semester bleary-eyed and regretting ever signing up for university in the first place. He and his mates had finally gotten a flat together, and since all of his other friends were intelligent human beings and had learned by now _not_ to schedule morning classes on a Friday, they had thrown a massive back-to-school party with fifty of their closest friends that Thursday.

James had tried to ignore it all and get some sleep, he really had. But his friends had an utterly unique talent for making an unimaginable amount of noise, and he had eventually given in to the age-old philosophy of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em".

Every molecule of his body pulsed with deep, deep regret.

He swept into the cramped lecture hall barely a minute before class was due to start, wondering what bad life decisions had led these other poor souls to end up in the same bloody eight am as him. There was hardly an empty seat to be found, not that the room was that large, but still. Who were these morning people? What planet did they come from?

He finally located an empty seat in the middle of one of the back rows, and apologized his way past his classmates, flashing his arse in their faces as he squeezed past them. Preparing to settle into those damned uncomfortable wooden seats for two hours of hell, he swung his backpack around to set it at his feet.

Promptly knocking over the coffee sitting on his neighbor's desk.

"Shit, shit, shit," he muttered as he leaned down to grab the mug, mortified and preparing himself for the tongue-lashing he surely deserved for being a great oaf and probably giving his seatmate third-degree coffee burns. He was going to pummel Sirius when he got home – whether or not he was responsible for the eight am, someone still needed to pay for this atrocity.

"It's okay," a breathy voice said in his ear, and his head snapped up with such sudden force that he ended up ramming foreheads with her.

"Shit, I'm so sorry, shit," he groaned, rubbing at his already aching head, closing his eyes in embarrassment, "Please feel free to kick me out of the row, you are perfectly in your rights due to my excessive twat-ness."

"Really, it's okay," the breathy voice repeated, and even though he was inclined to disappear into the floorboards, he couldn't help but crack open his eyes to see what kind face would match up with a voice that felt like a kaleidoscope of butterflies against his ears.

And he was floored. He had heard about those moments, when you see someone and time stands still, but for him time seemed to accelerate because he wanted to just drink her in for days but he already felt the seconds of appropriate staring time ticking away.

She had the greenest eyes, that was the first thing he noticed. Big doe eyes with long lashes that batted at him, with the lightest smattering of freckles on her nose, and just, _God,_ how was she real? She looked like some sort of fairy, a sprite, with one of those slightly upturned noses that spelled trouble and, holy Jesus, thick, lush, _red_ curls. He hadn't realized he had a thing for redheads until just then.

And he was thinking a million of things at once – only half of them appropriate for public consumption – when he realized his time was up and he had officially been staring for too long.

"It's really okay, see?" she was saying with a kind smile (and how had he missed _those lips?_ ), holding up a clunky grey object in her hand, "It's a thermos so nothing spilled, no harm no foul."

Unable to form one cohesive thought as his brain shut down, he just blinked.

Her smile faltered, turning into a look of confusion. "A thermos?" she repeated, holding it closer to him as if he couldn't see, "Like a travel mug? So the coffee doesn't spill?"

He stared at her for another beat until his backup generators kicked in and he sputtered in a panic, "Right, thermos, I know what that is, right, okay."

He was saved from his own idiocy as the professor walked in, and he turned away from her quickly, feeling his face reddening. He was so distracted with his own embarrassment that he completely forgot to listen for her name during roll call.

They didn't say a single other word the rest of class.

Lily felt like felt banging her head on the desk. Or a wall. Or maybe even just finding a nice cave to crawl into a sleep for the next millennium, Rip Van Winkle style. By then, any possible witnesses for this humiliation would be long gone.

Ah, but then Cute Thermos Guy would be dead too, and that would be such a shame. She needed to at least get a nice oil painting of him that she could stare at longingly, like the tragic heroine of some Brontë novel.

Because that's all she wanted to do, stare at his messy black curls that she yearned to run her fingers through, golden-brown skin that had that sun-tanned glow, the rectangular glasses that kept sliding down his nose adorably. And his _forearms_ , oh his forearms, she could write sonnets about them, if she only she knew anything about the format of a sonnet (she would have to google it later). He had to be some kind of athlete because they were just _yum_ …

Lily shook herself because she actually _was_ staring now, and she had to remind herself that despite looking artfully sculpted, she was not actually in a museum at the moment, getting lost in a breathtaking piece. No, she was in this stupid math course that she hadn't wanted to take but her advisor had tricked her into signing up for, telling her it was her easiest option to get her required math credit taken care of. He had conveniently left out the fact that it was an eight am class.

Lily was _not_ a morning person.

A trait she had exemplified perfectly by trying to explain to the most beautiful boy she had ever seen what a thermos was.

She decided to blame his forearms for the whole thing. She had been dazzled by their beauty, and it had led to her talking to Cute Thermos Guy like he was a toddler. It was a thing that happened on accident when she was distracted, her teacher voice, and she'd had more than one shoe thrown at her when she slowly tried to explain to her roommates Marlene and Dorcas why they couldn't leave their pot of mac and cheese out on the stove for a week, or why going home with the guy whose profile on tinder read "Beer pong expert, tinder scientist, booty wizard" was a _bad_ idea.

Now Cute Thermos Guy probably thought she was an imbecile, or that she thought _he_ was an imbecile, which might even be worse because condescending people were the kind that Lily would push off a cliff given the chance. Not like a running start push, or bring _to_ the cliff for that express purpose kind of push. But if she just happened to be standing near a ledge and a man started off a sentence with, "Well, _actually_ …", she would not feel the least bit guilty giving him a nice poke to upset his balance a little. And then an extra hand, just in case.

Suddenly, all around her people began shuffling their notebooks and pencils, and the professor began going over the syllabus in a low, droning voice as he pulled up a powerpoint. _Fuck_ , she'd missed roll call. Now she would have to go up and actually _talk_ to her professor after class, to make sure he didn't count her absent. Gross.

And she still didn't have a name for Cute Thermos Guy. _Sigh_.

Fueled by their mutual humiliation, James and Lily managed to not share a single word for nearly the entire semester. Not that this dampened the heat of their mutual pining, of course. Neither of them even thought about moving seats after their disastrous run-in, even going as so far to glare anyone down that tried to take the others' seat before they got there. They never allowed this strange possessiveness to show, of course, making sure to fiddle with the papers in their bag or pretend to be texting whenever the other walked in. This was all a façade, naturally; they were painfully aware of the other whenever they entered the cramped lecture hall.

They catalogued everything they could about the other, building up startlingly detailed fantasies of their nonexistent future together in their heads. One day Lily noticed James looking up recipes on his phone and she had the nicest daydream of him cooking an extravagant, from-scratch dinner for her while she looked on adoringly. (As in most of her fantasies, he was shirtless, because it was her fantasy and she would do what she wanted, dammit). James noticed the way Lily used a rainbow collection of gel pens to take notes in neat, precise handwriting, and he imagined her filling up their joint calendar with little notes and color-coded messages, maybe picking out purple as their 'date night' color. Based on his observations, purple was her favorite color.

Then there were the less domestic, more not-suitable-for-math-class daydreams, like the day when Lily had run out of clean shirts and had to borrow one of Marlene's tops to wear to class. Marlene had, shall we say, a much more adventurous wardrobe than Lily's nauseatingly Zooey Deschanel-style teacher clothing. She didn't notice until she got to class that the top she had haphazardly thrown on in her rush to class cut _much_ lower than normal, the kind of shirt she would normally wear with a camisole to cover up (not that she was ashamed of her body, she knew she had great tits, but she had endless fear of running into one of the little kids she tutored or, God forbid, their _parents_ while wearing sexy-time clothing and could just not bring herself to do it except when she knew it was far past their bedtime). Instead, the edges of her little lacy pink bra were on show for the world to see.

James had been so distracted that he gave up on taking notes completely and ended up recording the lecture on his phone.

Another day James had come straight from an early morning football practice (punishment for several of his teammates getting caught clubbing; they were supposed to stay sober during the season) and not had time to shower before class. Lily had never realized that being into sweaty guys was a _thing_ ; in fact she had always been a bit grossed out by their overwhelming stench. Plus, it reminded her of exercising, which gave her the ingrained reaction of _gross_. But the way his messy hair was plastered to his forehead and little drops of sweat glistened against his golden skin drove her absolutely mad, and his _musk_. Oh, that musk; for some reason it reminded her of those smutty Scottish Highlands romance novels she read on her Kindle so no one could see the cover. It was just _yum_. She kept on 'accidentally' dropping her pencils so that she could lean in and get a good sniff of him. Yes, she had indeed gone absolutely mad.

It all came to a head on exam week. Or, rather, the Friday before exam week, the last day to review before the test that accounted for a quarter of their final grade. James had been up all night trying to finish the review worksheet before he got to class so that he could ask questions about all the problems he didn't understand (which was more than he wanted to admit). Lily had two final papers due that day, and had hardly slept as she tried to get them completed on time (for a future teacher she had a surprising propensity for procrastination).

So it was that on that early Friday morning, Lily and James both walked into class looking like they had just survived the apocalypse, sporting heavy bags under their eyes and the kind of haunted look that made you want to go up and hug them. That morning Marlene had tried to tell Lily that her mascara had rubbed off and given her raccoon eyes; Lily had to tell her that she wasn't wearing any makeup, just slowly losing the will to live.

James and Lily were slumped in their neighboring seats, and for once they were thankful that the wooden desks were so uncomfortable because it helped keep them awake even as Lily's head kept jerking back as she slowly drifted off and James felt a bit of drool building in the corner of his mouth (thankfully on the side that faced away from Lily).

They were on the fourth problem of the review sheet, and James's head went fuzzy just looking at it:

X=((((6^2 * 10) + sqrt((5000*3) - 600)) / 4! ) * 4 ) - log(1 * 10^11)

There were just…so many numbers. James remembered this problem; he had only gotten through half of it before Remus had entered the room and found him in tears. (Even in his sorry state, Remus still hadn't shared any of his secret chocolate stash with James. The greedy bastard.)

Lily was cursing her advisor for about the thousandth time that semester, asking all possible deities above why anyone thought she needed to know how to solve _this_ to be an elementary teacher. She just wanted triangles. She liked triangles. She could solve the area of a triangle any day.

Professor Vector was droning on and both Lily and James were doing their best to listen, but a kind of hysterical bubble was rising in Lily's chest and James was wondering how much male strippers made. (Channing Tatum had made quite a career of it so it had to be reasonably lucrative, right?).

"…and once we balance the equation, we find that the final answer is sixty-nine," the professor finished in his monotone voice.

It was automatic, an impulse born from the kind of exhaustion that broke down their respective filters.

"Sixty-nine, nice," James and Lily muttered in unison.

Their heads both snapped up, looking at each other with big eyes as their reddening cheeks mirrored each other.

"Um, er, sorry, my humor turns into a thirteen-year-old boy's when I'm tired," Lily stuttered, embarrassed as her face heated.

James couldn't help but grin back. "I always have that kind of humor," he replied, "I've just done my best to repress it when I'm around you."

 _(And Lily's fucking heart swooped at his smile.)_

"When you're around me?" Lily asked, confused, "Why?"

 _(And the way she said it so innocently, so genuine, made James want to kiss her in the middle of the lecture hall.)_

James laughed. "Because you're fucking intimidating," he said, running his fingers through his hair (which Lily knew after watching him for so many months that it was a nervous habit).

" _Me?_ Intimidating?" Lily scoffed, "But you're all…" She trailed off as she gestured at all 6'2" of just _dazzling_ attractiveness.

"All what?" James asked, and Lily could swear he had a teasing smile on his face. _Fuck, was he flirting with her?_

"Oh, stop," she scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You know you're bloody gorgeous, don't even try the innocent act."

And now she was a tomato. Lily couldn't believe the words that had just come out of her mouth. _Bloody eight am_.

James was leaning forward now, though, completely ignoring the professor as he placed both elbows on her desk. "Gorgeous, eh?" he drawled with a crooked grin ( _even though internally he was in mass chaos)_ , "Please, tell me more."

So he _was_ flirting with her. And despite having developed a not-insignificant obsession with him, Lily was finding it was much easier to talk to him than she had ever imagined (and she had imagined _a lot_ ). She smirked at him now. "Don't want to feed your ego too much," she replied loftily, "Your head might inflate so much you'll just float off."

"Harsh," James replied, but he was grinning wider than ever ( _because who knew a nice slap-down would turn him on so much?_ ), "I'm not sure I would mind floating off right about now, though. It's not like I've learned anything in this bloody class the entire semester."

"Stupid eight am," Lily agreed, nodding her head sagely, "I've been trying to figure out all semester what I did to deserve such karmic retribution. I think it was the time I shrunk all of my sister's shoes by soaking them in the bath. I slept with a chair wedged under my door for months because I was sure she would kill me in my sleep."

James laughed so loudly that several people around them turned to glare; one even went so far as to shush him. But he couldn't help himself; not only was she smart and bloody gorgeous, but she was _funny_. That's when he knew he had to take the plunge.

"Um, that's not what I'm talking about," he begam, his grin shy now as his cheeks flushed, "It's not the, er, early mornings that distracted me. Or at least not completely."

At first Lily was confused but then she took in the look he was giving her and _wow_. His hazel eyes were looking at him like she was the greatest thing since pockets on dresses (and Lily had _very_ strong opinions about pockets) and just _wow_. There was no other way to describe the thrill that shot through her.

And god, she knew she was tomato-faced again, but fuck it, this was their last week of class together and it was now or never.

"Er, ditto," she stammered, "About the distraction. You know, with all that." She gestured vaguely at his body again, and the grin that James flashed was so fucking adorable that Lily felt herself swoon. That's right, a fucking Jane Austen-style _swoon_.

"How about we get out of here?" James whispered to her because he was of the same mind of 'fuck it'. "It's not like we're going to learn anything from Vector, anyways. We'd do better just studying together, yeah?"

"The blind leading the blind," Lily giggled ( _oh god, she never giggled, she was a total goner_ ), but she stood up to join him as they shuffled oh-so-conspicuously out of the lecture hall, eyes down to avoid Professor Vector's pointed glare.

As the lecture hall doors swung shut behind them, James thrust out his hand. "I'm James, by the way," he said, "James Potter. In case you didn't know, or whatever."

"Lily," she smiled back, shaking his hand, "Lily Evans. Nice to officially meet you."

And their hands lingered, entwined, just a second too long.


End file.
